


nostalgia

by fluffysfics



Series: the most infuriating seventy seven years of his life [5]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: 1980s, F/M, Hopeful Ending, Introspection, the Master’s time on Earth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-25
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-16 14:00:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29701623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fluffysfics/pseuds/fluffysfics
Summary: In the middle of Italy, 1986, the Master stumbles across the ruins of a small village.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Series: the most infuriating seventy seven years of his life [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2147559
Comments: 7
Kudos: 24





	nostalgia

For a decade, the Master travels the Earth. Properly travels, not just the long-term leapfrogging he’s been doing since the 1940s. He visits the Amazon first of all, and then he treks through the rest of South America; he spends a month or so in Mexico before flying across oceans to visit India, Sri Lanka, and then a quick tour around China and Japan. Gone are his concerns about having to learn more languages each time- he’ll do it, just for the sake of keeping himself busy. 

Sometimes he thinks about going back to Russia, but it still hurts too much. Other times, he considers revisiting England, but the mere thought of it seems to wrench open all of his feelings about the Doctor and make his hearts so heavy that he wants to collapse to the floor and never get up. 

Wandering the Earth is better, even if sometimes he thinks he’s only doing it to outrun his own thoughts. 

By 1986, the Master is feeling un-skittish enough about Europe to visit again, although he avoids France. It’s awfully hard to feel good about casually strolling around a country whose most famous landmark wrenches painfully on his hearts every time he sees it. Sometimes, he still dreams about those uniforms, about a police station on fire and flames licking at his arms. The scars are still there, just about. 

Thankfully for his decidedly unresolved trauma, the rest of Europe has their own grand monuments to be pretentious about. So the Master finds himself in Italy, soaking in the hot summer sunshine and indulging in as much of the delicious food as he can. Humans got something right with proper Italian-style pizza, he’ll own up to that any day. 

He has to admit, there’s a real charm to Europe that places like America just don’t have. Thousands of years of history almost literally leaking out of every rock, every building- it’s a sensation that practically _tingles_ , for a Time Lord. It’s a feeling that he’s missed, and it’s damn near close to addicting. It feels like...like companionship, like he can almost reach out through the ages and touch everyone who’s ever stood in this spot. 

It’s been a lonely ten years, if the Master is honest with himself. Travelling is all well and good, but there was something to be said for settling down in Russia. People to talk to; people who _needed_ him. It had been ridiculously nice to feel wanted. 

Maybe he should see if Italy has some kind of secret government department that tracks down aliens. That would be a nice place to insert himself into, he thinks, trailing his hand over a low stone wall. He can feel the history in it- this wall’s been standing for millennia. 

It follows around into the weathered ruins of some little town, or possibly the only remaining part of a larger town; it’s hard to tell. Italy is full of these places- little impromptu museums, places where the past bleeds out of every stone and the general public can just walk around them. 

Still mostly lost in thoughts about alien-hunting and having _friends_ , the Master follows the curve of the wall into the ruined village. The stones are chipped, covered in lichen, rough as he runs his fingertips over the well-worn grey of their surfaces. For several minutes, he just wanders, lost in thought- until a carving catches his eye. 

It’s not very well-preserved. The faces of the people in the image are nearly completely eroded, save for the large, serious eyes of one of them. A man, in a long coat, standing at the side of a woman. Behind them both is a shape that’s roughly rectangular, but the pattern of smaller shapes inside that main one is entirely too familiar to him. 

The Master drops to his knees on the floor with a bump, reaching out one shocked, shaking hand to trace the carving of the Doctor and his TARDIS. 

He recognises the style of the stone; this used to be an altar to someone’s household gods. Part of him wants to laugh at that. The Doctor, ending up as a family’s household god. Oh, he must have _loved_ that. 

Shifting closer to the stone, the Master presses his forehead to it, willing himself to understand the story behind it. But the rock stubbornly refuses to give up its secrets. With a wrench in his gut, he misses his TARDIS for the millionth time in forty years. As badly as he wants answers, he will not get them. He can’t. 

Maybe he doesn’t need his ship to know what went on. No doubt the Doctor saved some poor unfortunate family from aliens, probably with some sentimental speeches and grandstanding along the way, and then he ran off mysteriously and left them all baffled. What else does the Doctor ever do? 

Kneeling here in the middle of a field, forehead pressed against a rock, the Master thinks to himself that this is probably the first time in millennia that someone has worshipped at this altar. That _is_ enough to make him laugh; it’s a short, manic sound, one that ends in a choked noise that’s almost a sob. 

It’s been long enough on Earth that sometimes, he can almost pretend that he’s human. Perhaps that’s been the purpose of the last ten years. He’s been tricking himself. Travelling, hopping around places so fast that no one ever gets a chance to suspect that he’s anything more than a simple tourist. 

He misses contact. Touch, telepathy, even good conversation where he only has to lie about maybe thirty percent of his intentions, maximum. He misses K’vo, he even misses Margarita, and he never thought he’d get sentimental over a _parrot_. 

Most of all, and most painfully, he misses the Doctor. 

The Master draws his forehead back from the stone, gently trailing his fingers over the rough surface. The angular lines of the TARDIS; the soft seriousness of the Doctor’s face. He’s not touched the Doctor so tenderly in _so_ many years. Part of him wants to- wonders what it would feel like, how soft her lips would be to run his finger across. 

Those huge eyes seem to burn into him out of the carving. He remembers that Doctor on his knees, gazing up at him, begging him not to go through with his plans. He remembers a junkyard, a fight, a forehead pressing against his own, and feeling _seen_ for the first time in so long. 

He’d give damn near anything for another moment like that, the Master thinks miserably. Another moment of understanding. 

Unprompted, his mind drags him back to the Adelaide Gallery. His Doctor on her knees, hazel eyes burning into his own like she couldn’t decide whether she wanted to murder him or beg him to stop like her old selves would have done. How was he ever supposed to stay standing, with that gaze on him? Of _course_ he’d knelt with her. She could have commanded so much more from him then, and a terrifyingly large part of him thinks that he would have thrown his plan away and obeyed her without question. Anything for her attention, _anything._

“I miss you,” he whispers to the rock in front of him. 

It doesn’t respond. Funny, that. 

The Master sits back on his heels, tips his head up to the sky. If he was happy in New York, and in Russia, what is he now? It’s not sadness- he’s known sadness all too well. 

Sadness is the heavy, cold misery that makes it nigh on impossible to move even one limb, get himself up out of bed. It’s the ache in his chest that makes it hard to breathe, makes his hearts pound in his ears. Sadness is the stabbing pain of betrayal, and the insurmountable knowledge of his own worthlessness in the face of something so much greater than himself. 

This feeling hurts, but it’s somehow...kinder, compared to all of that. 

Nostalgia, perhaps. This aching desire to be wanted certainly does seem to fall in line with that. He’s nostalgic for times when he knew less, when it still felt feasible that the Doctor could love him as deeply as he loves her. When the memories of their childhood, of lying together and promising each other the universe, didn’t make him ache from head to toe. 

He needs to be realistic. It’s time for a change. 

He’s spent a decade on the run from it all; he needs to face the truth. When he meets the Doctor again, there’s every chance that she’ll beat him, and very little chance that she’ll _care_. Maybe he only has thirty four years left to live. And he’s wasting them here, kneeling in a ruined Roman village in Italy, staring mournfully at a rock. 

The Master braces both hands on the baking hot ground, takes a deep breath, and gets up to his feet. He’s a citizen of Earth, for the time being. So fuck it, he decides. Fuck everything. He’s going to enjoy himself like a human would, and damn all of the consequences. He’ll let himself feel his feelings, and he’ll scream at the sky until they fade away again and he can _live_. 

He’s sure he can find a party to spend a while at tonight. And then the next night as well, and probably the next few after that as well. He wants contact, that’s certainly one way to get it. 

And after he’s had his fill of Italy...Britain, in the late 1980s, reeling from strikes and protests and terrible government? 

That seems like the _perfect_ place to go to cause a little chaos. 

**Author's Note:**

> hope you enjoyed this one! comments and kudos are very much appreciated <3


End file.
